Generally, a wind turbine includes a tower, a nacelle mounted on the tower, and a rotor coupled to the nacelle. The rotor typically includes a rotatable hub and a plurality of rotor blades coupled to and extending outwardly from the hub. Each rotor blade may be spaced about the hub so as to facilitate rotating the rotor to enable kinetic energy to be transferred from the wind into usable mechanical energy, and subsequently, electrical energy.
Under some atmospheric conditions, ice may be buildup or otherwise accumulate on the rotor blades of a wind turbine. As the ice layer accumulating on a rotor blade becomes increasingly thicker, the aerodynamic surface of the blade is modified, thereby resulting in diminished aerodynamic performance. Moreover, ice accumulation significantly increases the weight of a rotor blade, which can lead to structural damage as an increased amount of bending moments and/or other rotational forces act on the rotor blade. In addition, when there is a differential in the amount of ice accumulating on each of the rotor blades, a mass imbalance may occur that can cause significant damage to a wind turbine.
Due to the disadvantages associated with ice accumulation, a wind turbine may be shutdown when it is believed that ice has accumulated on the surface of one or more of the rotor blades. Operation of the wind turbine may then be restarted after it can be verified that ice is no longer present on the rotor blades. Accordingly, upon shutdown of a wind turbine for ice accumulation, each rotor blade must be inspected to determine whether ice is actually and/or is still present on the blades. Conventionally, this requires that each blade be visually inspected from a location on the ground. However, due to the risk of falling ice, the service worker(s) performing the visual inspection must be located a safe distance away from the wind turbine. As such, it is often difficult to visually detect ice accumulation on the rotor blades. Moreover, such a visual inspection of the rotor blade blades typically takes a significant amount of time, which may unnecessarily increase that amount of time that a wind turbine is shutdown to check for ice accumulations.
Accordingly, a system and method that allows for the accurate and efficient detection of ice on a wind turbine rotor blade would be welcomed in the technology.